I'm going to go on a mini-rant here and say these books have annoyed me throughout with the frequency of run-on sentences, fragments, and homophone errors. Maybe this makes me overly obsessive about grammar, but in books aimed at kids who are supposed to be learning how to properly compose sentences and use words, the number of these mistakes in these books is simply unacceptable.

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Wow, a sentence with 39 words in a rant about "proper" grammar, irony is a wonderful thing.

As for what I'm reading, I'm finishing off Lost Souls and hopefully will do so before Storming Heaven drops through my letter box.

There's nothing ironic about it. Her sentence is long but perfectly correct and not run-on in any way. It's a common but false misconception that "run-on" simply means "long".

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True and false. Regardless of whether it is correct or not, it is long. Try reading it out loud. I personally ran out of breath by two thirds of the way through it. Now I'm not perfect, I garble the Queens English all the time. That rant though did smack of irony and was rather amusing for it.

I don't find it a particularly long sentence. It has a simple and straightforward structure: Maybe A, but given B, then C. Just three parts, and it takes up under three lines in total. The only flaw I see in it is the reuse of "these" in the final phrase, which is a bit awkward-sounding, but not actually ungrammatical.

For comparison, here's the closing sentence of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is often held up as a great example of concise and efficient public speaking:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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That's 82 words and a complicated structure with five segments. Yet aside from a few uses of punctuation that wouldn't get by a modern copyeditor, there's nothing wrong with it as a piece of writing. It's not an abuse of language to demand an attention span from your audience.

Again, "run-on sentence" does not mean "long sentence." As Wikipedia puts it, "A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (i.e., complete sentences) are joined without appropriate punctuation or conjunction." For instance, this is a run-on sentence:

It's cold in here, I should put on shoes.

This is not:

It is cold inside my apartment this morning due to the unseasonal lows we had overnight and the outdated temperature controls in my apartment building; therefore, my feet are chilly right now, and I would probably be more comfortable if I put on a pair of shoes.

The former is a run-on because the two clauses are improperly connected. It could be fixed in any of the following ways:

It's cold in here. I should put on shoes.

It's cold in here; I should put on shoes.

It's cold in here, so I should put on shoes.

The latter is a rambling and needlessly long sentence, but it isn't a run-on, because the independent clauses have conjunctions or correct punctuation connecting them.

Now pardon me while I put on my shoes. It really is pretty dang chilly in here.

Thanks for putting in all of that effort, but I knew all of that already. OTOH, it's also useful to explain my joke: In German it tends to be vastly more common to form long, multi-clause sentences, and unlike in English, it is not considered a stylistic sin to do so.

One of the telltale signs of an inexperienced English speaker hailing from a German background is sentences of that nature, replete with comma-placement following German grammatic rules. And "break up your sentences!" is an often-heard admonishment in German English classes. In fact, even having majored in English in school and using English very frequently, I'm still prone to forming far longer sentences than is considered good, clear English a lot of the time.

Just finished Romulan War: To Brave the Storm. I really enjoyed it, but I can see why people say it feels rushed. I'll probably see if I can find the review thread to go into more detail on my opinions on that.

About to start Star Wars: Republic Commando - Triple Zero. The next book on deck is Catching Fire, the second Hunger Games book.

"Tunnel in the Sky" impressed me with various characters and portrayals, especially given it was written in 1955. On the other hand, I felt that "Farnham's Freehold," given situations and certain characters, left more questions than answers...especially in regards to plot thingys.

I am still looking to read Heinlein's "Variable Star" (which I attained in a surprising manner) as well as some other books and short story collections. And, I may read "The Door Through Summer Again"...someday...since I'm in a conundrum of what to actually read next.

He--Heinlein--seems to have a certain curious theme, which I've noticed other readers of Heinlein have caught.